Marcus Wong. Gunzel. Engineering geek. History nerd.

Archive for October, 2012

Melbourne: we used to call ourselves the sporting capital of Australia, but going by the current plague of gambling advertisements plastered across our trains, trams and railway stations, has sports betting capital become a more appropriate name? I say yes – but why have they suddenly become so common?

Pedestrians – the City of Melbourne is full of them. But how do we know how many of them are pounding the footpaths each day? Posting people at street corners with a tally counter and a clipboard is one way, but now there is a much more high tech way to do the same job – can you see it?

In Melbourne getting help from a staff member at a railway station can be difficult, when around half of them have nobody in attendance. My local station used to have staff, at least until a few weeks ago when Metro Trains took them away. So where did they go?

It was the early 1980s and my mother and father had just moved in together, when a television commercial for American Express travellers cheques captured the public imagination, giving my parents a new annoyance to deal with.

Daylight savings time: every year I need to go around the house to change the clocks forwards an hour, and then do it all over again to put them back an hour a few months later. Having the incorrect time on the wall clock in the kitchen doesn’t worry me, but one incorrect clock that *really* pisses me off is the one in my digital camera. So how do you go about fixing it after the fact?